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CHAPTER NINETEEN fly away
⋆*✧･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ:
AN OLD JAZZ SONG piped through the hair salon's radio, but for once, Nadine didn't request to change the channel. She'd never really been a fan of '60s music—really, she was all about the '80s. Queen and The Cure posters had been plastered to every available wall in her room at La Petite Montagne, Elsa played from her vintage record player, and Duran Duran was often among the top artists in her Spotify Wrapped. Which is why it was so difficult to adjust to an era where none of these bands even existed—and, for that matter, neither did Spotify Premium. She'd spent her first few months in 1961 refusing to even turn on the radio. She just couldn't stand the music, nor the quality of them; so different from the crisp listening experience of 2019. It was just fortunate that she remembered the lyrics to a lot of her favourites. Sometimes, she was able to entertain herself by singing ABBA or Les Démons de miniut by herself, even if she didn't exactly have a pitch-perfect voice.
Today, though, Nadine really didn't mind the '60s tunes. She, Klaus, Allison, and Vanya were all lounging in Odessa's, the hair salon Allison worked at. It was obviously meant for Black hair—the labels of the products stacked on the counters proved as much—but Allison was making do with her options as she combed through Klaus's shoulder-length locks. Of course, she had a bottle of champagne in her other hand.
They were all a little drunk—and in Klaus's case, a little high. He was smoking a cigarette now, completely relaxed while Allison worked. Vanya was sitting in another chair, shooting finger-guns at the mirror, and Nadine was in a third, braiding and unbraiding her own short locks. One knee was pulled up to her chest.
"The nerve of that man," Allison was saying, a growl spilling from her lips. She'd been on a similar tirade about her husband for the past five minutes, and while Nadine was interested, her mind was a little too buzzed to pay complete attention to it. "I mean, one thing goes wrong, and he's on a warpath. I mean, doesn't know who I am? No, no. No, Ray, you know exactly who I am. You just can't handle it. I'm... I'm protecting him."
"From what?" Klaus asked lazily.
"The end of the world, for one."
"Is the world really gonna end in six days?" Vanya asked, watching Allison work on Klaus through her mirror.
Allison, who was now sliding clips into Klaus's hair, pursed her lips. "Well, it did last time, and we did everything Five could think of to stop it."
"Not everything," Nadine pointed out. "I mean, he did suggest killing a few random people, didn't he?"
She hadn't heard that first-hand, but according to Luther, that had been one of his options. He'd scrawled the math on his bedroom walls, and somehow concluded that the deaths of a few ordinary people could completely prevent the end of the world. It was certainly the Commission in him speaking—after all, it was very similar to what they'd attempted to do to Nadine—and likely wrong. Still, it had been an option that they hadn't used, and that was the only reason why Nadine brought it up.
